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Reporters Without Borders condemns the five-year jail sentence that Omar Mamedov, a 19-year-old blogger and opposition activist, has received from a Baku court on a trumped-up drugs charge, reads the statement on the official site of the organization.

According to RWB Mamedov was the victim of a politically-manipulated trial designed to silence a government critic. “Bloggers continue to be jailed in Azerbaijan despite President Ilham Aliyev’s claim to the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly on 25 June that his country has “a free Internet,” the document reads.

According to Johann Bihr, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, recently many political trials have been conducted.

“We call on the justice system to overturn this conviction on appeal and acquit this blogger of the absurd charges brought against him. The Council of Europe should draw the appropriate conclusions from this increase in repression being orchestrated by Azerbaijani government,” the representative of the organization stated.

Omar Mamedov was sentenced to five years in prison on July 4. Mamedov was an active blogger and one of the administrators of the page "Lists of AzTV" in Facebook posting cartoons, collages, comments making fun of vices of Azerbaijani authorities.

Another online activist, Elsever Mursalli, member of the NIDA movement was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment in April this year. He was also accused of illegal drug purchasing and trafficking.

Earlier, on 25 November, 2013 on charges of drug trafficking was arrested Abdula Abilov, an active user of Facebook. On 13 November 2013, Rashad Agaaddin (Ramazanov), active Facebook user who criticized the authorities and mocked the President Ilham Aliyev for nominating himself to the presidency for a third term, was sentenced to 9 years in prison.

A young activist of the Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan, active user of social networks Dashgin Melikov was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison on July 3, 2013. He was recognized as political prisoner by a number of local and international human rights organizations and as a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International.

Azerbaijani Institute for Peace and Democracy (IPD) published a list of political prisoners existing in the country. Thus, as of May 21, 2014 there are 130 victims of political repression in Azerbaijan: 41 prisoners of conscience and 89 political prisoners.